


Dino

by Robin Hood (kjack89)



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Case Fic, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 05:43:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16804747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjack89/pseuds/Robin%20Hood
Summary: Prequel toPost-It Notes.The story of why, exactly, Carisi doodled a dinosaur on a skateboard on a post-it that he sent to Barba.Also the story of what may be the world's dumbest criminal, and the testing of Carisi's patience.





	Dino

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mforpaul (Linde)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linde/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Post-It Notes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11912553) by [Robin Hood (kjack89)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjack89/pseuds/Robin%20Hood). 



> For mforpaul, who borrowed the reference of a dinosaur on a skateboard for [a fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16783558) recently, which was, frankly, a reference I had forgotten about entirely. This led me to wonder what exactly I had been thinking in the first place and under what circumstances Carisi might sketch a dinosaur. On a skateboard.
> 
> And thus, I wrote this.
> 
> Usual disclaimer. Please be kind and tip your fanfic writers in the form of comments and/or kudos!

“No.”

“C’mon, Fin,” Carisi sighed. “I’ve been on for 36 hours straight. And I know, I know, I’m still the ‘new guy’, even though it’s been over a year, but can’t you handle this one?”

Fin gave him a slightly amused look. “Dude’s name is Dino,” he said, as if that somehow answered Carisi’s question.

“It’s a fairly common Italian name,” Carisi muttered.

“And he didn’t even have the sense to change it to something else,” Fin finished. 

Carisi glared at him. “Fine,” he snapped. “But the next time you try to get me to come in at 3 in the morning for something, I’m not doing it.”

Fin just laughed. “Sure, new guy,” he said, turning back to the paperwork on his desk.

“New guy my ass,” Carisi muttered as he let himself into the interrogation room and settled down across from the thin, pale-faced man whose knee hadn’t stopped bouncing since he’d come in. “So, Mr. Moretti—”

“Dino,” the guy interrupted with the slow sort of drawl that Carisi tended to associate with surfers or stoners. Or both. “Mr. Moretti’s, like, my father.”

Carisi cleared his throat. “Dino,” he started again, opening the case file in front of him, “the, uh, the desk sergeant at the 27th precinct said that you came to the precinct to turn yourself in?”

Dino nodded, his eyes wide. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that’s why I went in. I, um…” He fiddled with the cuff of his sweater. “I don’t know why they made me come over here. Why they couldn’t just arrest me there.”

Carisi leaned forward. “They sent you here because this is the Special Victims Unit,” he said. “And the desk sergeant seemed to think that what you were there to turn yourself in for would be better handled by our unit. So why don’t you walk me through what happened?”

“Well, um, see, I’m not, like, from here,” Dino said, his face flushing blotchily. “I’m just in town for some business, and…” He cleared his throat. “I was feeling kind of lonely. So I…”

He trailed off and Carisi sighed, already seeing where this was headed. “So you raped someone,” he finished for him. “Is that it?”

“What?” Dino’s eyes widened even further and he shook his head quickly. “N–no, I didn’t rape anyone!”

“And yet you intended to turn yourself in for a crime.”

Dino nodded. “Yeah, exactly,” he said earnestly. “Cuz I hired someone.”

Carisi stared at him. “You hired someone.”

“Yeah, like a, um…” Dino leaned in and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Like a hooker.”

“O...k…” Carisi said slowly. “So you hired a sex worker. And then…”

He trailed off, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but Dino just stared blankly at him. “Dude, and then I had sex with the hooker. And then I came to turn myself in.”

Carisi blinked. “I feel like I’m missing something,” he said. “You hired a sex worker, and then immediately after having sex, you went to a police station?”

“Yeah,” Dino said, beginning to look at Carisi like he was stupid, and frankly, Carisi was beginning to feel that way. “Because it’s a crime.”

“What’s a crime?” Carisi asked, exasperated.

“Having sex with a hooker!” Dino burst. “That’s prostitution, and it’s, like, illegal!” He paused. “Isn’t it?”

Carisi pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering for a brief moment what exactly he’d done to get saddled with what may actually be the world’s stupidest criminal. “If you hired a sex worker, it’s solicitation, actually,” he said with a sigh. “And— Look, I’m a cop and I’m not supposed to say this, but if you hadn’t have come in, no one would know that you committed solicitation.”

Dino stared at him. “You mean…”

“Yeah, if you hadn’t said anything, you wouldn’t be charged with a crime,” Carisi told him.

“Dude, could you, like, just forget that I said anything, then?” Dino asked hopefully.

Carisi gave him a look. “Not so much, dude. Especially since you were informed of your rights when you were at the 27th precinct.”

“What does that mean?”

Carisi resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but just barely. “It means that you just unnecessarily confessed to a crime, dumbass. You’re under arrest, and I’m gonna highly recommend that you call a lawyer.”

Dino’s mouth fell open and he stared at Carisi in shock. “You — you can’t do that, man!”

“Too bad stupidity isn’t a defense,” Carisi grumbled. “Sit tight, and I’ll be back.”

He stood, ignoring Dino’s protests of “C’mon, man!” and went out to the bullpen, practically slamming the door behind him. He had a bone to pick with the 27th precinct desk sergeant for sending him this damned case in the first place.

* * *

Carisi drained his tenth cup of coffee in as many hours and stared blankly at the coffee pot as if it would somehow refill itself. He jolted when someone touched his back, and he whirled around to see Barba, looking torn between amusement and concern. “I’d advise laying off the caffeine, Detective, but you look like you need it.”

“God, you don’t know the half of it,” Carisi sighed, drawing a hand across his face. “Fin fill you in on the details?”

“He gave me the rough outline,” Barba said, jerking his head toward the interrogation where Dino still sat, accompanied by a particularly sour-looking public defender who looked as incredulous as Carisi at his client’s stupidity.

“Yeah, rough about covers it,” Carisi muttered as he and Barba headed toward interrogation. “Dino Moretti, contender for the world’s dumbest criminal, turned himself in to the 27th precinct and confessed to the desk sergeant that he had hired a sex worker. Desk sergeant ran the alias of said sex worker, whose pimp is Byron Smith, street name B-Easy.”

Barba snorted. “If my name was Byron, I’d go by B-Easy too.”

Carisi ignored him, too tired to get into their patented back and forth banter. “B-Easy has ties to United Blood Nation, specifically to a sex trafficking ring operating out of Harlem and the subject of—”

“—A multi-month joint investigation between SVU, Vice and Gang squad,” Barba finished. “I’m familiar with the investigation, seeing as how I’ve called four Grand Juries based on evidence found through the investigation so far.” His tone was waspish but his expression was almost soft as he looked up at Carisi. “And the case has in large part been nothing but a headache because we’ve had difficulty speaking to any clients of said sex trafficking ring, which is where our delightful criminal Dino comes in.”

Carisi nodded. “I mean, look, the guy’s clearly an idiot,” he said bluntly. “But he’s also scared shitless, so if he has anything he can tell us, even just how he contacted the girl, he’ll make a deal.”

“Can’t believe I’m going to be offering a deal to the idiot stupid enough to walk into a police station and confess to a crime he wasn’t even wanted for,” Barba muttered, staring at Dino through the one-way mirror. He shook his head and looked back at Carisi. “You ready to talk to him?”

“Do I have to?”

Barba cracked a grin. “That bad?”

“Let’s just say I’d rather go four rounds with Buchanan than deal with Dino the dimwit.”

“I didn’t realize you get so alliterative after so many hours without sleeping,” Barba remarked. “Almost poetic, really.”

The corners of Carisi’s mouth twitched toward a smile, but didn’t quite get there. “You should hear me on stakeout. I start writing sonnets after eight hours stuck in a car.”

“In that case, remind me to never spend eight hours in a car with you.”

Carisi rolled his eyes. “I don’t think you’ll be in danger of that anytime soon, Counselor,” he said before pulling the interrogation room door open and letting himself back in. “Alright, Dino, I’ve had a conversation with the DA and we’re willing to work with you on a deal. But first, I need all of the details about your encounter with the sex worker known by alias—” He checked the casefile. “Bo Dayshus.” He glanced back up at Dino. “Seriously?"

Dino nodded. “Yeah, the name was, like, what really drew me in. It was, like, fate or something, you know?”

“I definitely do not,” Carisi said, feeling his headache returning with a vengeance. “So why don’t you walk me through how you went about hiring Ms. Dayshus.”

As Dino launched into a lengthy, meandering explanation of how he had gone about hiring a sex worker, Carisi took dutiful notes, though he left out some of Dino’s more colorful editorial comments, and asked follow-up and clarification questions as needed. All in all, it was going fairly well, or so Carisi thought until someone rapped on the window, a signal that they needed to see him outside.

Carisi scowled. “Gimme a minute,” he told Dino and his lawyer before standing and stalking outside where Barba was waiting for him, his expression unreadable. “What?” he snapped, and Barba looked taken aback, just for a moment. “Sorry,” Carisi sighed, rubbing his forehead. “Long day.”

“Well I’m about to make it shorter,” Barba told him. “He’s credible. Have his public defender call Carmen to set up a meeting for the plea deal.”

“Just like that?” Carisi asked, a little surprised, because Barba generally liked to have all the details in place before agreeing to a deal.

Barba sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “If I have to listen to that idiot say the words ‘rad’, ‘man’ or ‘dude’ one more time, I’m going to shove his skateboard or surfboard or whatever down his damn throat,” he told Carisi dryly. “And since I’d rather avoid a homicide charge—”

“Trust me, I wouldn’t be the one to arrest you for it,” Carisi assured him, half-smiling at the thought.

“I appreciate that,” Barba said with a small smile of his own. “But I’d rather not put you in that position. So have his attorney call my office and get him into protective custody until we can get the details of the plea worked out.”

He clapped Carisi on the shoulder in a gesture that probably looked nothing more than friendly to anyone else, but the move spread a warmth throughout Carisi’s chest that even allowed him to temporarily forget his exhaustion.

In fact, that warmth kept his exhaustion at bay all the way through turning Dino over to the officers who would take him to the safe house and halfway through the veritable mountain of paperwork he now had to complete and get over to Barba as quickly as possible.

But when it disappeared, it left Carisi feeling drawn and empty, and he stared at the form in front of him until the words started swimming on the page. He closed his eyes in hopes that would temporarily stave off his pounding headache, but instead, all he could hear was Dino’s grating voice in his head.

And that was the last thing he wanted to think about.

He grimaced, vaguely wishing Barba had carried through on his threat to whack him with a skateboard or whatever he had said, and he stared off into space, trying very hard not to daydream about homicide. 

He must’ve dozed off, just a little, because his very tired brain somehow warped hitting Dino with a skateboard into Dino on a skateboard. Only it wasn’t Dino the moronic criminal, it was Dino from the Flintstones on a skateboard. 

And for the first time in almost twelve hours, Carisi grinned.

And then he started to laugh, for the first time in a hell of a lot longer than that.

And when he finished his notes from the case to send to Barba, he made sure to include a post-it note with a little doodle of a dinosaur on a skateboard, with a little word bubble over its head proclaiming “Rad!”.

He was pretty sure Barba would figure out the reference. And even if he didn’t, Carisi was pretty sure it would still make him smile, just like the thought had made him smile.

And the chance at making Barba smile, even if just for a moment, was enough to make the exhaustion worth it.


End file.
